Against Callimachus

And he remained as a participant in their government until that day on which you were on the point of attacking the walls of Athens; then he left the city, not because he had come to hate the present regime, but because he was afraid of the danger which threatened, as he later made evident. For when the Lacedaemonians came and the democracy was shut up in the Piraeus,[*](By Pausanias, king of Sparta and his general, Lysander.) again he fled from there and resided among the Boeotians; it is far more fitting, therefore, that his name should be enrolled in the list of the deserters than that he should be called one of the “exiles.”

And although he has proved to be a man of such character by his conduct toward the people who occupied the Piraeus, toward those who remained in the city, and toward the whole state, he is not content to be on equal terms with the others, but seeks to be treated better than you, as if either he alone had suffered injury, or was the best of the citizens, or had met with the gravest misfortunes on your account, or had been the cause of the most numerous benefits to the city.

I could wish that you knew him as well as I do, in order that, instead of commiserating with him over his losses, you might bear him a grudge for what he has left. The fact is, though, that if I should try to tell of all the others who have been the objects of his plots, of the private law-suits in which he has been involved, of the public suits which he has entered, of the persons with whom he has conspired or against whom he has borne false witness, not even twice as much water[*](The time allotted to the litigant for his speech in the Athenian law-courts was regulated by an official water-clock (the klepsydra). One has been found; cf. Hesperia viii., 1939.) as has been allotted me would prove sufficient.

But when you have heard only one of the acts which he has committed you will readily recognize the general run of his villainy. Cratinus once had a dispute over a farm with the brother-in-law of Callimachus. A personal encounter ensued. Having concealed a female slave, they accused Cratinus of having crushed her head, and asserting that she had died as a result of the wound, they brought suit against him in the court of the Palladium[*](The tribunal for cases of unpremeditated homicide; also for trials involving the murder of slaves, resident-aliens, and foreigners. Cf. Aristot. Ath. Pol. 57.3.) on the charge of murder.